Raúl Romero Fíguls began as a rider in the motorcycle championships of Catalonia and Spain, but soon he realised his true calling to manage a team rather than to ride the bike. In the mid 90’s, he put his first team together, competing in the Spanish and the Catalonian championships, in the European championship and at the 24 hours of Catalonia. The team was a success and once it had become a reference in the CEV, Raúl Romero’s team made the move to the world championship in the year 2000, staying involved and celebrating victories and titles in the CEV, the European championship and the 24-hour-race at the same time. Associated with the team were numerous riders that later on became world champions or continue to be front runners of the MotoGP world championship, such as Álvaro Bautista, Aleix Espargaró, Maverick Viñales, Efrén Vázquez, Scott Redding, Stefan Bradl or Tito Rabat. Besides the most famous ones, many other riders took their first steps to glory in the teams of Raúl Romero.
After leaving the management of the team to others and working just as a consultant of Avintia Racing Team for a period of time, Raúl Romero returned to the steering wheel of the entire MotoGP project with Esponsorama this season and the results couldn’t have been better. Héctor Barberá finished the 2016 championship in tenth place and the team expects to battle even closer to the top with Barberá and his French team-mate Loris Baz in the next season.
In the meantime, Romero and Esponsorama have extended their activities well beyond MotoGP and got involved in prestigious projects of the Dakar Rallye. After testing the grounds with Ford and Xevi Pons lastt year, Romero and Esponsorama will participate with Pons y Ford once again and will also be involved with sponsorship deals for the official Toyota team with Nani Roma and Nasser Al-Attiyah.
